onionbagblog

To Broad Lane! …for the first home match of the new season with Wivenhoe Town. We start early in non-league and we also end early. Wivenhoe are usually on the beach come the end of March, and not in a good way, either.

The pre-season has been one change for the Dragons. After the bloody awful relegation experience of last season, somehow the league gave the Dragons a reprieve. We find ourselves in the same division that was a bit of a dog’s dinner for the Dragons last year.

What could possibly go wrong?

There has been change on the ground however. This has taken the form of a new (ahem) stadium sponsor. I had the pleasure of a bit of a meet ‘n’ greet with the young fella ahead of KO. He is very ambitious and certainly seems to have the right ideas about how to move the club forward.

We’ve also got a new coaching team in the dugout. Thankfully the same old supporters are still lingering around the old place. You can’t handle too much change in one go.

But wait! What’s this?

I’ve gone on something of a personal quest in recent weeks to try and get more people from the town into the ground. Broad Lanes may be within CO7, but it never actually feels part of the community.

It needn’t be this way. It wasn’t always this way. I intend to change this with a long campaign in which to promote the Dragons from a personal perspective.

Having plugged the match online earlier in the week, I thought it only appropriate to arrive early for once. No one wants to be late for their own party, right?

I arrived 15 minutes or so ahead of KO. Blimey, there’s only a car park attendant. I’ve never seen this before.

SHIT THE BED - there was actually a queue of around fifteen people waiting to get in. I hope the stray shot from the warm up that narrowly missed taking the head off a newbie in the queue didn’t put them off.

My season ticket was flashed at the gate. This dropped earlier in the day. We were asked to send over a couple of selfies to be added. The joke amongst the hardcore is already that our season tickets look like skiing holiday boarding passes.

CHEESE!

It was great to catch up with some friendly faces inside the ground. One of the old lags let it drop that the new coach hasn’t actually taken over yet. He’s serving out a suspension from his previous position.

Whoops.

I looked around the old place. I can’t take personal credit for this but the crowd was certainly healthy. The two-for-one offer helped. There was also the obligatory opening day season inflatable to make it more family-friendly.

SHOUT OUT to the deputy mayor of Wivenhoe, who made a bloody good effort in turning up. It was very decent catching up with her. She genuinely wants to help out the football club in whatever capacity she can at the Town Council.

On the pitch and Wivenhoe got off to a blunder. An early penalty led to a 1-0 lead. This was an incredibly young team. I would say a couple of players have yet to reach the age when they can actually celebrate in a pub after scoring a penalty.

Bloody hell - we were only 2-0 up in under ten minutes. Maybe now would be a good time to go home?

A third soon followed with a quite exquisite passing move that would have been lauded if Manchester City had made such an approach. That was probably the first and last time I will compare Wivenhoe Town with Man City this season.

The rare times that Wivenhoe needed to defend, they did it rather well. The away team’s number eleven was rather tricky. He went on a few good mazy runs.

Parson Drove, were then awarded a penalty themselves. This seemed a bit harsh. The lino they confessed he couldn’t see a bloody thing. The ref claimed it was handball. The young Wivenhoe ‘keeper made a tremendous save but the follow-up was then knocked in.

Halftime came and went. Out came the away team with their heads down. This looked like a game that they had lost already.

It was great to see some father and son - or mother and son - interactions from the Wivenhoe players ahead of the restart. This showed how young the new team is. Their parents had come out to support their kids.

A fourth goal for Wivenhoe followed 50 minutes into the second half. It was a beautiful lob that fooled the away ‘keeper.

Parson Drove offered little physical threat throughout the game. It will be interesting to see how the Dragons fair up against some of the more experienced cloggers they will no doubt come across in this league.

The visitors then scored an undeserved second goal. Wivenhoe responded with a very much well-deserved fifth with five minutes to go. The strike into the top corner was the goal of a game.

And do we already we have a record of P3, W2, L1. The away defeat to Holland on Sea can best be explained as a loss against what will be a promotion-chasing team.

Whisper it quietly: these are exciting times ahead at Broad Lane; the new coach, the young team and my rather disorganised one-man campaign to get more people in to the ground may just lead to something of a special season for the Dragons.

Another day, another trip to the allotment - or that should be another day and another two trips to the allotment. I’ve done the double dipping thing on consecutive days.

The reason for all of this back-and-forth activity is that I’ve got a brand new set of wheels and I’m going to bloody use them. I’ve also got two wormeries that need transporting from the garden over to the patch.

The poor old worms started out life in Essex when they were pushed through my letterbox. They didn’t stay here long, maybe a day or so, before I transported them down to South London for a la-di-da Sunny Stockwell lifestyle.

They thrived back in Transpontonia for over a decade, and yep I’m not as naive to know that the original letterbox Essex worms are unlikely to be the ones that are still around. Nature is rather good like that.

After living it up in SW8 they then headed back to the Bloody Estuary Wilds. Good luck with that one, as they say. Now they find themselves strung out on the allotment.

Saturday morning at the allotment was a little more lively. There was an unforgiving heat already starting to build up.

The tomatoes however still need to get something of a shifty on. We’re not entirely sure if the yellow ones are ripe or not. I had an interesting chat with some old fella who was growing blue tomatoes. I never knew such a thing existed, tomato, tomatoe, etc.

Across the field preparations were well underway at the cricket club for President’s Day. This is the most prestigious day of the year in the local cricketing calendar. It involves getting dressed up in rather stuffy clothes. I tend to stay away.

The two umpires look most resplendent as they strolled out to the middle in their traditional white shirts and black trousers with boater hats. This was a bit of a different look to the shorts and vest from the fagging umpire we normally see for a Sunday social.

I left the worms to do their business. Who knows, I can’t rule out them having a trip back to south London at some stage in the medium or long-term.

To be continued…

Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers with Moanin. This" arrived box fresh and sealed. I wasn’t expecting that.

I couldn’t resist buying this after it was album of the day early in the week. It sells for around £15 to £20. I managed to source a cheap-as-chips version, which makes the box fresh arrival all the more surprising.

I’m being drawn two ways musically right now. The Summer of Prog is still going on, but the jazz nerd within is starting to fight back. You could argue that prog and jazz are just distant cousins that contain something of the original gene.

That’s of course an oversimplification of the many different strands and genres of jazz. I love Art Blakey for the sheer energy and emotion that comes across. His band doesn’t hold back when it comes to either blowing or hitting things.

Moanin' is the perfect song for hazy summer days. It makes me want to sit in the garden and drink endless cups of tea. Art Blakey had the right idea.

It will never cease to amaze me the amount of tat you can give away. And so we’re having something of a garden redesign. This involves getting rid of all the tat which we have out-tatted. Apologies to any of the tat dippers who have picked up our tat from outside the house, but also, equally, a thank you. You’re certainly helping us out.

The speed at which this stuff disappears is quite incredible. Our water butt this morning lasted less than a couple of minutes. That surely got to beat even the South Lambeth Road tat timings. Good effort, tatters.

Another Saturday morning, another lost album find by the always excellent Late Junction. My morning catch up from the night before led to Late Junction dropping a very laid-back soulful track. It felt very contemporary = think Kiwanuka, with the soulful vibe dialled down even further.

But wait! What’s this?

And so here we have Eugene McDaniels and the rather bonkers Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse album. Late Junction reliably tells me this dates back to 1971. It was something of a lost masterpiece until a recent re-release.

The story goes that Eugene was a minor pop star towards the late 60s. He then took something of a major left-field step and came up with the Headless Heroes Masterpiece.

Late Junction added that the album came under great scrutiny during the fevered days of early 1970s US Conservative politics. Fast forward 2026 and same as it ever was, etc.

There are early elements of funk here but soothing soul holds it all together. After a couple of listens it’s already a companion piece to the equally bonkers Aphrodite’s Child by 666, which I stumbled upon this summer.

Like I said I was born in the wrong decade.

“Blair opened his premiership on the Aylesbury Estate, a few minutes' walk away, in which he promised to rid the country of “no hope areas” like the flats behind him. “There are estates,” he said, “where all that is left of the high hopes of the post-war planners is derelict concrete. Behind the statistics are people who have lost hope, trapped in fatalism.” The narrative was set: estates as archaic decay, a Labour framing that met an existing Tory one halfway."

The Londoner on the framing of the Heygate.

Hey! Want to see a one-man-band transporting half the contents of his home garden over to the bloody allotment? Good news! Especially if you were anywhere around the mean streets of CO7 on Friday lunchtime.

Domestic issues back at vase has meant we need to offload some of the garden shit ASAP. Aha, I know - we rather handily have an allotment plot where a lot of this shit can be dumped.

Maybe I should paraphrase that. Yep, I have carefully read the T’s and C’s of the Town Council lease regarding the allotment. I can confirm that I am not dumping fridge freezers, food scraps, or even a dodgy old porno collection.

We’re talking the odd brick here and there to support the allotment verges, plus what we salvaged from a decking that has been ripped up. These will serve as useful planks for navigating from the strawberries to the courgettes to the sweet corn, etc.

A pair of wheels were sourced. We opted for a folding trolley to make the short 10-15 minute journey back and forth.

The test drive went very smoothly. I urged caution, as ever in my life, and didn’t overload it. Job’s a good ‘un.

I reached the allotment from the other side of the fence. I could see that Cricket Week at the cricket club was in full swing. The marquee is standing and looking rather proud ahead of President’s Day on Saturday. A game of cricket was also taking place throughout Friday afternoon.

I had a quick look around the patch before my second trip with my new trolley. The pumpkins are ripening rather well. The poppy weeds have dried off. The allotment is now lacking a little colour without those wonderful early summer red poppy flowers.

This will soon change with the tomatoes. SHIT THE BED, we have bloody loads of them. Some are red, some are of the yellow variety. It’s going to look like an organic psychedelic disco once they hit their peak.

Unfortunately the raspberry canes are not looking quite as healthy. They haven’t died off but they have yet to produce any produce. This is a shame as back at base we had raspberries growing out of our arses. This was one of the reasons for the much-needed garden redesign.

And then we come to the courgettes. OH MY DAYS. These are also going to be another bumper crop this year. I have looked at the possible options of selling these online. I don’t think I will get to be the Courgette King of CO7 before Christmas.

The first trip with the new trolley was a success. I turned around, headed back to base, loaded up the trolley, and then did it all over again.

I was a little more reckless on my second visit. Half a dozen planks of decking were transported. The trolley swayed from side to side as though it had enjoyed a lunchtime tipple too many. The 10–15 minute journey became 25 minutes.

The allotment was reached, the cricket game was still taking place, and the bloody raspberries had still yet to grow.

Allotment life, innit.

To the Table of Dreams! …for the second consecutive day. The public park was eerily quiet. In the distance we could see smoke emerging from Fingeringhoe Wick. This is something of a worry. The fields around these estuary wilds parts are absolutely tinderbox dry. I did think of doing a rain dance before we had our wiff waff warm-up.

Our first decision was which ball to use. We started TWATTING the ball from corner to corner using the conventional indoor ball. The wind picked up picked up and the warm up became a little more anarchic. Time for the heavier ball.

The wind ball carries plenty of momentum when you it the sweet spot and the ball bounces a few metres back. It then continues to roll way down the long slope of the hill, such is a lack of friction on the bone dry grass. I confess to taking great pleasure in achieving this kind of shot and making my playing partner increase her step count for the day.

The game was interrupted by a celebrating clucking from one of the hens in the nearby coop. “She’s just laid an egg!” declared my playing partner. Yeah, well done you. I’ve got a game of table tennis to try and win.

Somehow I found myself 2-1 in a best-of-five. This isn’t gonna last, right? We went into the final game decider, with everything to play for.

The score actually went up to 10-1-, with 11 needed for victory although two clear points to seal it. I bottled it. Blame the clucking hen that put me off my stroke.

The new album from Beth Orton is something to cherish. The Ground Above carries on from Weather Alive with a voice that feels like it might break down at any moment. She somehow manages to hold it all together. You’re through some of her shared pain along the way.

I really regret missing out on Beth over the past three decades or so. This is her ninth album. All those cliches of being the Comedown Wueen somehow passed me by. Truth be told and I never really came down during those tired and emotional days of living the party lifestyle.

The vocals on The Ground Above are so weathered. There’s some fine jazz musicianship on this album, but it’s the voice that breaks through and remains front of centre.

Somehow Beth Orton has managed to emerge as one of those unique and celebrated British female voices. Sure she’s never going to trouble the charts. This is non-commercial music that is still being allowed to be released and managed by the mainstream.

We should cherish her.

Oh dear. Bailed after less than a minute. Horrid, horrid rock rap. Whingy white boys. Wanky guitar solos. Nope. SEE YA!

⭐